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Stopped being transgender ( but indefinitely. ) I'm a mess.

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by rhamphorhynchus, Jul 3, 2015.

  1. rhamphorhynchus

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    Posted this thing repeatedly at places but this section might be the most suitable one for it. The admin probably think i'm an attention whore. Which is sensible.

    And please excuse my drunk mannerism in this writing. I'm sorry.

    Now

    Fuck the term "Coming Out".

    Because it is a societal norm, heterosexuality, which create this ridiculous phenomenon of "coming out", to clarify that you are something beyond the norm. I hate the compulsive claustrophobic closet that i was put in since my birth. Think of it like this, people who identify as straight are actually spend their lives living in closets too. It might be that they could actually move comfortably in it. While roughly 2 percents homo sapiens don't. Is coming out of that freakishly uncomfy closet an act of entering another new closet ? Stuff like that.

    I felt like i might have to say something, after having spent time listening. Impatiently

    I was a child when i first put on my mom's dress. I actually like that softness of woman clothing, the softness of the free-floating long hair, the softness of female. I used to be obsessed with that fragility. I like girls, then contradictorily i want to become them, girls. Early preteens days was a strings of events which consist of imagination of how i would have looked in various state of girl's dressing, put shoelaces glued together on top of my skull pretending it was hair, being genuinely intrigued by dolls (but also toy cars and pokemon, strangely) , fooling around on heels, eyeliners and woman overpriced cosmetic bullshit and whatnot. All of this was done in a very discreet state of mind. Like, uhm, a little secret of my younger self. Imagine Buffalo Bill and his guilty pleasure (with no skinning and torturing people of course).

    When i learned of the definition "transgender", i must have definitely considered myself one. I got, uhm, all the sensible "symptoms", lol. Thinking of how it is like to be a female is on top if it all. My personal psychological identity was extremely clear for a 10 years old kid : a girl.

    In seventh grade was the time i learned the state of being sexually / emotionally attracted to a boy. It was, inexpressible. Yet not surprising. Still this isn't something i have experienced before. A boy.
    The truth is that recollecting these memory, i felt a sense of bias. The first time my gender identity was interfered and struck by a very fundamentally sexual factor. I watched a gay film. I touched a boy's hand. I felt that softness again. The beautifully fragile softness of the concept "female" is now the softness of emotional affection.

    You know how on some Jupiter's moons, there existed water. But not our familiar kind of H2O. The temperature was too low, and our precious liquid on earth instead frozen, creating mountain, bedrock and landscape. The "water" on that moon might be , mind-blowingly, liquid methane. Methane. Most of your stomach gas. Methane. They say water is the origin of life. Imagine life with methane as water. Imagine how life there would be. Preciously outlandish.

    My transgender-identified self was an earth-based creature and my new unknown identity is life forms from io or some others Jupiter's moons. Talk about alienation.

    5 years later, that little self-assured girl in me disappeared. She wouldn't recognise this guy here. I referred to myself as a "guy". I rarely think of dresses and tweed clothing anymore without her, for some reason. I should mention that i had never in my life considered transition as a sensible choice . Which leads to the true question.

    What really is being female ?

    What fundamentally is being a female ?

    What really is being a boy ?

    I may console myself by putting on a wig, some makeups and a nice dress. But at the end of the day, what am i ? Who am i ? A dress equals female ? Beautiful fragility equals female ? If you notice it, being a female is more of an phenotypical matter these day. I look typically female, okay, but am i am by definition a true girl ? I don't know. But then what is the definition of a true "female" ? Is it a social construct ?. At the end of day, it is some hormonal difference, some organic difference, some psycho difference. But so, so, so vital, gender, and so problematic, gender. I awared that people who have successfully transitioned may be offended at me calling their effort and sufferings pointless, but sometimes i wonder, what do you feel after injecting a shot of medical estrogen / progestin. Your true psychological gender identity has to be coordinated with your phenotypical shell in the most artificial way. Is this really about being a girl ? Or being a concept of "woman" ? With breast, vagina shaped organ, a female phenotype ? Or a concept of a "men ?

    The girl is gone. She stood up and walked away. The truth is that, all of the question above, i i think she asked it. Then she left. I'm now all alone. She was me. I am now me.

    I did however get to feel that fragile softness being a boy. Something that is probably socially prevented, you know, for a boy to feel. It makes me question the nature of gender. I rarely called myself "gay". Or even "bi". Those words are definitive description, you know ? I may as well say i do also like men, but never a definite noun. Not for something as haywired and so fucking complex as the labyrinthian world of the human mind. Google a neuron network in your brain. You'll see.

    Notice how recurring the word " i" in this post. I made this a subjective thing, you know.

    At the end i should probably stop wondering the whole who am i crap. We-human are so small after all.

    Thank you for reading the endlessly running rant train of mine which admittedly gets uncontrollable sometimes.

    The girl dies out, but she left some very deeply profound trace. Now i just have to cross that forest over there and take her back here, and hang out with her, in unison. Such a beautiful word, unison.

    What is really being a female, then ? What is really being a male ?
    Fuck this bullshit, i haven't got a clue.
     
  2. Just Jess

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    Hi and welcome!

    Don't be so down on yourself, you are fine! We're a support forum where we help each other, talking about stuff that's messing with you and your life is what this place is for :slight_smile:

    So let me, if I may, answer a question with a question.

    What are they to you?

    What I mean is, do you watch anime? There is an old one I grew up with (I am getting ancient) called "Ghost in the Shell". It's okay if you don't. The idea is, they had robot bodies. Bear with me for a sec, I am going somewhere with this. So these robot bodies, could feed your brain the same chemical and electrical stuff a human body could. You wouldn't notice the difference. One of these characters, Major Matoko, always insisted on having a female body. She could be anything. A tank, what have you. But she chose a female form.

    So let's throw that shell away. Who really is The Major? It's one of the themes I absolutely loved from the show. What makes you, you. Where is the line? Where does your mind start?

    I think a huge part of me being drawn to that kind of sci fi was, I am trans. And it gave me a way to figure out what that even means.

    Anyway, the part where I think this will help you. So when you take that shell away, what you're left with is the Major's "ghost" - her identity - and a bunch of chemicals and info coming in, and a bunch of decisions coming out.

    So how does the info you're getting from other folks make you feel? When you're being treated like a boy? When you're being treated like a girl? You definitely know what "boy" and "girl" are in your "ghost". Without your doing a thing, that time you touched a boy's hand, you can't deny the way it made you feel. It's a very real part of you, there is no use denying that. Some part of you recognized what was going on. You were never taught to feel that way. You just do. In the same way, whatever a "girl" is, that part of you identified with it. Not with anything you were taught about girls. What you were born with.

    Let's put that shell back on. People probably treat the Major very differently when she looks like a girl, right? I think that has something to do with why she insists on a female shell.

    Does all that make you a girl? You tell me.

    But what I'm getting at, is I'd like to ask you, what your needs are. You are the one that has to go through your life, day in and day out. We unfortunately don't have robot bodies we can just swap out yet. You know how the stuff coming in affects you. You know you can't help that. What you can help is what you do about it.

    If you ask me what I am, I'll tell you I'm a woman. I'll gush being the sci fi nerd that I am on how sex hormones affect the human body and why that science informs what I think a male and female is. But at the end of the day I'm just drawing a line. I think it's a damn fine line, it's definitely backed by science, much much more so than the lines my critics like to draw. But it is a line. Behind that line, the person I am - not all trans folk are this way but I definitely am - the person I am definitely did not react well either to testosterone, or to being treated every day like a boy. This person needed to feel the same softness and lightness you felt, even if other things made me feel that way. My "ghost", the way I see it, is undeniably female. The things I was taught about females play a role, a very powerful role. But they are far from the whole story. That part of me won't fit in a male shell.

    You can call it whatever you want. Call it male if it suits you. There are things about it though that I won't deny any more. Rather I work with them. And since learning to work with who I am, I have been able to turn a hell of a lot of things in my life around, and I have a serious shot at my life goals now.

    I think one of the most frustrating things about all of this, is that who you love is the only thing that's visible to a lot of people. People that used to know me as a guy, when they hear me say I'm gay, assume I like guys. I don't really care to correct the assumption too quickly, because it helps them see me as a woman, because they can't separate the two concepts easily in their heads. You hear turns of phrase, "what women want", and you just automatically assume, usually correctly, that you're about to hear something about men.

    If the word "gay" works for you, and maybe the word "woman" doesn't, they're just words right? How you feel underneath and how I feel underneath probably still have a lot in common. But maybe your needs are slightly different. Maybe what HRT and a new social role have done for me, a wonderful and understanding husband could do for you. Maybe we have the same needs.

    If I can ask, can you imagine what a perfect day for you, five years from now, would look like? Who are you? Who are you with? What do you have for breakfast? What do you do for a living?

    And then if I can go a step further. What can you do to make that happen?
     
  3. Anastaisa_Lynn_14

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    Well what is being a girl to you? Because it is different for everybody. Being female for me is having breasts and long hair. Just because you don't feel female 100 percent of the time doesn't make you any less trans, it takes time to figure out what you want. It may take you years or maybe a couple of months. If u ever need to talk just message me :slight_smile: I'll be there for u.
     
  4. Posthuman666

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    Being female is being female. You don't need any organs or makeup to be female, you just need to be female.

    Why is a table a table? Sure you could sit on a table, but does that make it a chair?

    A table is a table and a chair is a chair. They cannot escape what they are, and humans cannot escape who they are.

    In the end, you are female if you feel female. Female means different things to different people. Female and Male are relative terms that don't really need to be there. I was born in a male body, but I am a female.

    From a cis perspective, that doesn't make any sense. But to the LGBT community, it is a common occurrence. I don't need a female body to be female. Nobody needs to tell a chair it is a chair. Because it is a chair.


    Labels are words, nothing more, nothing else. The closet is a taboo realm, one that I plan to burn to the ground, for myself and for everyone else.


    Feel free to message me if you need anything. (*hug*)
     
  5. rhamphorhynchus

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    I have to say thank you for the replies. It triggered some strange emotions. Gave me a long and hard thinking. Now I just really have to think.

    Thank you.

    Thank you.

    And jess, ghost is supposed to be truest reflection of Major, isn't it ? But then, when Major puts on the shell, she has chosen a way for people (under many circumstances) to treat her. A ghost shouldn't be able to exist physically without its vessel, so the vessel - the shell - is the means. It is the means that distort the interaction. It strange because if Major wanted to be treated as herself - wholly , than it should be process of interacting with the ghost of her, not with the ghost through its shell. The shell should be a reflection of the ghost, but it's not a perfect one. I'm very awared that we don't live in a kind of psychological utopia where this could actually be in practice, yet this idea intrigues me, just that.

    You asked me what those things mean to me ? I think it means convenience. It nice to be organised, be able to to put things into neat categories, to create distinctive lines. And the end the diverse nature of the world makes all of the categories collapse.

    I would like to say thank you one more time. You know, it's nice that you found your fine lines (in a way). I think mine would take more questing though.
     
  6. thesonoferik

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    Does that mean you identity as an male-bodied woman? Are you not going to transition?
     
  7. rhamphorhynchus

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    This is very interesting. I think even the state of gender dysphoria might be unsettling, but definitely transcends some biological concept. Well said, psthuman6*(3)